Category: The Coaching Experience: Searching for myself!

At this point in my coaching journey, my greatest challenge has been to work on being self-compassion. This has been primarily because I thought I was there and at the same time I hoped that self-compassion works out on itself without conscious and deliberate action towards achieving it. I realized that of all the things I did not nature, one of them has been the skill to feel for myself. For a long time my life has revolved around feeling for other people easily and actually working to ensure that I do the maximum possible to help them feel better whenever I can. But I forgot this girl.

So I reflected on the three things I am committing to in this journey in order for me to scale on. This is part of the process of coming from a place where I was struggling with my past in the last blog post as a way of finding space within myself to rise and be me despite all that has happened. It is not an attempt to perfect anything about me, it is a process of acceptance, affirmation and compassion for the self. Because at this point I really can’t express the three concepts enough I have penned my aspirations for them in a poem. I just want them to be tangible in my memory.

“Self-Acceptance”

I receive myself as I am

I am a struggle walking towards freedom

I am a woman whether that is understood or not I rise anyway

I am an emotional creature; I express myself to passion and feeling

I meet up with frustration, but triumph is a portion I commit to

I hold on to the past, but my dignified option is the future I will create for myself

All this I receive to the self and accept,

Self-Compassion

Is where I should be as I am going there?

I see myself there

Self-care being my priority and only option

Harnessing self-joy, uncontainable

I rise and rise there

Even if I carry of the burdens of this world, nothing will move me anywhere else

I am kind

I am kind to my self

I am kind to myself enough to accept, love and take care of myself

All this I receive to the self and accept!!!

Self-Affirmation

I am joy

I am happy

I am alive

I am heartbeat

I am inspired and inspiring

I am hope

I am good at what I do

I am kind to the self

I am living whilst I am alive

I am on a purposeful journey

I feel

I love

I relate

I engage well

I communicate well

All this I receive to the self and accept!!

I reflected on the need for these three things because I noticed that negative introspection placed me in a fearful place where I could not fully appreciate myself for who I am and for the experiences I have gone through. Personally , the coaching experience is the future for me, it is a journey so far that has taught me slow down and look at the very things I thought I had but were invisible in essence. This explains the reason why I have always felt for a long time that there has been a gap in my life and I just couldn’t place what was missing. Therefore working through this reflection is propelling me to focus more on myself which is still very difficult at this point.

Despite all this I have a picture which I am visualising every day and the beauty of it is that it evolves as I work through myself. It’s a picture of self-joy and genuine happiness that sips into my external relationships. So for me the struggle to discover that self is worth it. !!!

My coaching journey continues and something I wasn’t expecting happened. I crashed a few days back. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. In my first post on my coaching I explained that I really wanted to find myself again and make that work for me. But what hit me after starting the process is something I did not see coming at all. I have had to discover that this journey is also about learning new things about ourselves –both positive and negative. From life experience getting to point out the things that are not good about us is a very difficult process. And as I got into this journey I am fully aware that I am not being coached because there is something wrong with me, but it’s to get me to a better space. However, through my reflections and through the exercises I I’ve been doing I couldn’t really resist going there , to that space where as you process the challenging task of making an effort to be self-aware you instinctively search for what is wrong with you, that thing that needs fixing so you can be a better person. There must have been an animal making me the kind of person I so desperately want to change. So I inevitably started looking for the wrong this about me in this regard.

I did and it broke me.

Initially all I did all I could to remain positive and focused. I tried hard to protect myself from the harshness of confronting the personal. It is a very challenging process; in the moment, I almost hated myself. But then, who said the coaching journey would be easy? I remain the same girl still burying myself in my work and reading -I was hoping that would be fixed as soon as possible, I was hoping that I would make an effort to become more relational with people- in the hope that I ‘d get to know that girl’s relational side . I was there in that space –nothing changed. It is a journey right and a process. I wanted everything to be perfect and to flow from day 1 I guess it’s the NGO syndrome –it’s always about results never mind how you get there. Reading through the reflections I have been penning in my journal is not motivating at all. I am failing to be kind to myself.

It’s almost as if ever since I started the search to find myself I am alternating between multiple identities shaped by my past experiences. Some of which I chose to ignore yet they needed to be resolved. Past hurts that I thought I would ward off by simply making a decision to ignore them. Every time I sit to reflect, they are there waiting to pounce on my thoughts, scurrying t to control and remind me of where I have been. In noting this ,I am learning that whiles life moves forward your everyday life is almost like you are re-living what you have been through (the good and the bad) from the time you were a child till now. It’s true what they say the past shapes the future. I never in a single moment imagined that a lot of my life experiences would come flooding in through this process and for me this seemed not good in the moment.

I am not bashing myself against the wall and trust me, I hate negativity and when I found myself reeling with negative thoughts I tried to work on stopping them to a point of frustration. That’s when I made a decision to just let it be. I will reflect on the things I think need fixing even though this journey is not about fixing. I will reflect on what low esteem has stolen from me. I will reflect on the time I lost loving people who didn’t love me back. I will reflect on that one time when my heart was shredded right before me and I couldn’t do anything about it. This man walked away with his dignity and I didn’t. He got it all then almost like It was his reward for hurting me. I will reflect on the pains of trusting people who didn’t deserve it. I will reflect on the times when things were hard , whenI almost thought I’d lost a chance to a dignified future and the struggle to get out of those thoughts, I will reflect on feeling helpless watching the people I love suffer , I will reflect on loss.

I also noted that my peers on this journey had reflections which seemed better than mine. Spurred up and all. But I wasn’t. It worries me yet my mind is not letting me go. Maybe I should go through this and work through it. Maybe the fixing mode is not so good after all. I find everything is a struggle but as always I will try to push through.

And the questioning continues where I can find myself –some sweet healing to save the day. ?

(This blog was due some weeks back but I had to hold on to it. I wasn’t so sure what to do with it. I felt that the reflections would expose me on this public space but today as I posted it. It feels vulnerably liberating to know that I can be true to myself and to the commitment I made. Even now I continue to struggle in this space but I am hopeful I have you reading it –I have the consolation that this might help someone.. Much love.

Visioning
For a long time, I have always been clear on what I want to do with my life. Setting my vision and goals from an early age, the last thing I thought I would need was a coach. As my career progressed, they are processes that I went through that helped me define who I wanted to be ; a campaign strategist. This came to being because I fell in love with campaigns simply because they made my working life easy and I found them to be more impactiful that the normal programmng routine. Having set all this, the next thing was to establish a project. At that point, with the pressures comming up with the new project I had set up, I realized that I didn’t know this girl who had decided to call herself the campaign strategist. All of a sudden there was a lot of conflict within me. Perhaps my A type personality had taken it’s toll (even though I felt I wrongly assumed that it would take me to greater heights and make me an achiever) The question which haunted me was-what could have gone wrong for such a seemingly vibrant young girl who had it all together ,(at least to the outside world)?. I just couldn’t place the source of conflict.

Two women in one
They are things I have mastered in my life , things that I do well such as my writing ,reading and my work. However reflecting on the conflict within me made me realize that behind that prowess there is fragile girl dying to come out as positively vulnerable to a lot of experiences around her. I am not always strong, driven and daring . They are times when I have to struggle to put a brave face in the struggles which life presents time and again. Coming to terms with this has not been an easy process,it has just been necessary. My search for balance has propelled me to reflect on a lot of things lately and I feel I need to step up to get to know my self better. I progressively realize with each day that the Nyasha who goes to work and the Nyasha who is at home is different. If I can connect that, then perhaps maybe I can sail through as I evision a better future for myself and for the women I work with.

To discover that was quite a red flag for me. It appears as if there is need to bring in some kind of alignment on board in my life , which confirms that perhaps what I am searching for is not balance but alignment maybe. It is that need for alignment that has motivated me to go through a coaching process in the next 12 months of my life.
The Coaching Experience
The inception of the coaching was greatly insightful for me as I had thge opportunity to explore my personaliity type in wake of the conflict which I am going through. For thge first time I am reflecting on everything around me focusing on the self and to try and synchronize the value which I give to my family and my work. I have also decided to lay down the rule of self care in my life. I need to take care of myself and become more self aware of the things I can do without straining myself . In other words, I am searching for a better relationship with myself in order to build good ones out there.